Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks to the media and students at Humber College regarding his government's new federally-imposed carbon tax in Toronto on Tuesday, Oct. 23. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press)

We saw a clear example last week of how political debate in Canada about man-made climate change has descended into fantasy.

On the one hand, the details Prime Minister Justin Trudeau released about his carbon tax don’t add up.

On the other, Conservative leader Andrew Scheer, if he has a plan, has thus far refused to tell Canadians what it is — other than attacking Trudeau.

Trudeau, in imposing a federal carbon tax on Ontario, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and New Brunswick, predicts his national carbon pricing plan will lower Canada’s industrial greenhouse gas emissions by 50 to 60 megatonnes (a megatonne, or Mt, is one million tonnes) by 2022.

Terrific. Aside from the fact Trudeau’s predictions have been wrong before (see “modest deficits”), the latest report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released Oct. 8, says Canada and the other 197 signatories to the 2015 Paris accord, must now reduce their emissions to 45% below 2010 levels by 2030, to avert catastrophic climate change.

To understand how unattainable this is, in 2016, the last year for which figures are available, Canada lowered its 2015 emissions by 1.4%, to 704 Mt from 714 Mt, both of which are higher than the 694 Mt Canada emitted in 2010.

This new IPCC target would mean lowering our emissions to 382 Mt annually, a drop of 322 Mt in 12 years.

To achieve that, Canada must shut down the equivalent of its entire oil and gas sector (189.5 Mt annually), plus 76.6% of its transportation sector (132.5 Mt annually), by 2030.

Even adding in whatever other strategies Trudeau has to reduce emissions aside from carbon pricing, that’s not possible.

Trudeau isn’t on track to meet the far less stringent targets (which used to be Stephen Harper’s) he agreed to by signing the Paris accord in 2015, having abandoned its 2020 target.

The accord’s target for 2030 means we must lower our annual emissions from 704 Mt to 512 Mt, a 192 Mt cut, again wiping out the equivalent of our oil and gas sector.

Even if Canada achieved any of these unattainable targets, it wouldn’t do any practical good, because we’re only responsible for 1.6% of global emissions and they’re still rising, by 1.4% last year.

Those demandingimmediate, dramatic government action constantly cite UN IPCC reports about the urgency of the issue, failing to mention that if they’re accurate, catastrophic climate change is inevitable.

They believe inadequate targets are better than no targets, in the hopes technology and popular will eventually catch up with the enormity of the problem.

As for big business, it’s hardly surprising they’ve climbed on board Trudeau’s bandwagon, because carbon pricing is really about who controls and profits from federal energy policy.

Trudeau said during the 2015 election campaign his carbon price would give Canada the “social licence” to build pipelines and export our oil globally, giving a multi-billion-dollar boost to our economy because our land-locked oil resources are currently sold at a huge discount.

That hasn’t happened so now he’s changed his tune.

Now he’s selling it to Canadians living in the four provinces refusing to implement his backstop carbon price of $20 per tonne of emissions in 2019, rising to $50 per tonne in 2022, by claiming 70% of them will be better off financially through rebates.

Even if true it means, according to Trudeau, that Canadians in provinces that didn’t comply with his national carbon price will be better off financially than those in provinces that did, which doesn’t make sense.

Trudeau should have created one, 100% revenue-neutral, national carbon tax — returning all the money raised directly to Canadians.

What he’s done allows him to pose, for a while, as an international Boy Scout, as he loves to do, boasting about his good intentions, not that they’ll have any practical impact on global emissions.

That said, Trudeau’s plan is open to criticism because he has one.

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer stands in the House of Commons during question period on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2018. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick)

Scheer and conservative premiers like Ontario’s Doug Ford — who’s joined a constitutional court challenge against Trudeau’s carbon tax with Saskatchewan — haven’t told us what they would do, even though they say they believe man-made climate change is real and must be addressed.

Perhaps their strategy, whatever they eventually propose, is really just to attack Trudeau’s carbon tax as a cash grab, making common cause with those who believe man-made climate change is a hoax, or that nothing can be done without cratering the economy, or that new technology will eventually solve the problem, without carbon pricing.

If that’s what they believe, they should say so, and Canadians can decide who they believe in next year’s federal election.

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